Former FIFA presidential candidate Prince Ali bin Al Hussein has accused football’s world governing body of trying to “blackmail” the Jordanian Football Association (JFA) into backing Gianni Infantino’s bid for a fourth term as FIFA president.
Prince Ali, who is president of the JFA, said the organisation had sought FIFA’s help with three separate matters this year but was told that support for Infantino would have to come first.
In a strongly worded post on X on Tuesday, Prince Ali said the first issue involved visa problems affecting Jordanian supporters travelling to the World Cup. Jordan have qualified for the tournament for the first time in their history, but some fans, including those who had bought tickets “at exorbitant prices”, had experienced difficulties obtaining permission to enter the United States.
The JFA also asked FIFA for assistance with the American taxes Jordan’s players and staff will be liable to pay after their stay in the US. Prince Ali said the association had not budgeted for those costs and would not have faced them had Jordan been based in co-hosts Canada or Mexico.
His third complaint was that Jordan were still waiting for prize money from the FIFA Arab Cup in Qatar last December. Jordan went unbeaten before reaching the final, where they were beaten 3-2 by Morocco.
“It is clear the problem really is with (the) leadership,” continued Prince Ali, who stood unsuccessfully against Sepp Blatter in the 2015 FIFA presidential election and then challenged Infantino and Bahrain’s Sheikh Salman bin Ibrahim Al-Khalifa in 2016.
“For months, FIFA has been refusing to help us on any of these or other matters until it was verbally communicated to me, during the World Cup, that if I endorsed Infantino it would go a long way to helping our FA out.
“We pride ourselves in Jordan in upholding ethical values. We did not endorse him before and certainly will not now. But the whole situation amounts to blackmail and we refuse to give in to that.”
FIFA has not responded to a request for comment.
Why Prince Ali’s intervention matters
Prince Ali is the third son of Jordan’s former king and the half-brother of the country’s current ruler. He also founded and remains president of the West Asian Football Federation, which currently includes 12 FIFA member nations, giving him considerable influence in Asian football.
He served as a FIFA vice-president from 2011 to 2016, when he was removed from the role by Sheikh Salman. During that period, he campaigned successfully for FIFA’s ban on the hijab in women’s football to be lifted and established a development programme aimed at raising funds for improved football facilities in the Middle East.
His intervention comes at a difficult time for Infantino, whose position has been weakened by the collapse of plans to establish a subsidiary to own the commercial rights to FIFA competitions and sell a 20% stake in the new company to private investors.
The proposal prompted opposition from the Asian, European and North and Central American confederations last week. UEFA, European football’s governing body, said it had lost confidence in Infantino’s leadership.
The Asian Football Confederation and Concacaf, which hosted this summer’s World Cup, have not gone as far as UEFA in calling for a change at the top of FIFA. However, both organisations are demanding urgent answers from Infantino about why the plan was developed in secret, who appointed the banks and funds involved, and why FIFA believed it needed to sell a stake in the business.
Those questions have particular significance because FIFA is estimated to hold reserves of $7bn.
Infantino has yet to respond to the concerns but withdrew his “FIFA Forward Enterprise” project in a public statement on Saturday.
Since then, several UEFA member associations have publicly withdrawn their backing for Infantino to stand for a fourth four-year term as FIFA president next year. A number of senior FIFA executives, including deputy secretary general Mattias Grafstrom and chief of global football development Arsene Wenger, have also issued statements saying they had been misled by Infantino and were unaware of the FIFA Forward Enterprise project.
